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FreeCol 0.11.4 was released on Friday, but found
to generate broken maps. It has been withdrawn.
0.11.5 will be released soon.

FreeCol 0.11.3 released

Sunday, 8 March 2015

FreeCol 0.11.3

The FreeCol team are vaguely pleased to
announce the release of FreeCol 0.11.3.
This is a bug fix release to clean up yet
more annoying problems in version
0.11.0/1/2. See the
release notes for
more detail. All 0.10.x and 0.11.x games
should continue to work with
0.11.3.

The FreeCol team are mostly pleased to
announce the release of FreeCol 0.11.2.
This is a bug fix release to clean up yet
more annoying problems in version
0.11.0/1. See the
release notes for
more detail. All 0.10.x and 0.11.x games
should continue to work with
0.11.2.

We hope you enjoy FreeCol
0.11.2. Onward to 1.0.

The FreeCol Team

FreeCol 0.11.1 released

Sunday, 16 November 2014

FreeCol 0.11.1

The FreeCol team are sort-of pleased to
announce the release of FreeCol 0.11.1. This
is a bug fix release to clean up some
annoying problems in version 0.11.0. See the
release
notesfor more detail. All 0.10.x and
0.11.0 games should continue to work with
0.11.1.

We hope you enjoy FreeCol
0.11.1. Onward to 1.0.

The FreeCol Team

FreeCol 0.11.0 released

Saturday, 18 October 2014

FreeCol 0.11.0

The FreeCol team
are pleased to announce the release of
FreeCol 0.11.0. This release is mainly
an opportunity for the developers to fix
some difficult structural problems that were
blocking progress. That said, there are many
useful new user visible features, listed in
the release
notes. And lots of bugs were
fixed.

In particular, we had an
intractable cluster of bugs that could not
be fixed without making an incompatible
change to the saved game format and dropping
the 0.9.x compatibility code.
Therefore, this is 0.11.0, not 0.10.8, and
0.9.x games will no longer load
correctly. The hope is that this is
the last save-format break before 1.0.

Given the large changes and long gap since
the last release, the next release is likely
to be a maintenance/bugfix release to tidy
up problems that were missed in
testing. More people testing the
git/trunk would be most welcome.

We hope you enjoy FreeCol 0.11.0.
Onward to 1.0.

The FreeCol Team

FreeCol 0.10.7 released

Monday, 07 January 2013

FreeCol 0.10.7 has been released. This
is a bug fix release to correct some serious
gameplay problems in 0.10.6. The only
new feature present is some improvements to
the graphics.

Since FreeCol
0.10.6 was released there have been 18 new
bug reports, of which 8 are fixed in 0.10.7,
one (roads are sometimes ignored) is
partially fixed, 4 were invalid, 3 can not
be reproduced or are otherwise awaiting
clarification, one was a duplicate and one
was a content contribution. Two other
pre-0.10.6 bug reports were also
fixed. Bug reports remain crucial to
improving FreeCol. When reporting
please try think about what the developers
would need to reproduce the bug. Very
few bugs are easily reproducible from just a
textural description. Too many bug
reports get stalled, sometimes indefinitely,
because of a missing log file (which is
almost always needed in the case of a crash
or hang) or missing saved game (almost
always needed to replay some sort of strange
behaviour).

Note also, we do not
handle translation directly. FreeCol
is translated by the volunteers at
https://translatewiki.net/. Please
raise translation issues there, except in
cases where you see messages containing
percent-delimited words %like% %this%.
These are coding bugs and belong on the bug
tracker.

There were also several
other bugs fixed, including one that can
result in certain bonuses (e.g. Jefferson,
Newspaper) being counted twice. This
can lead to very enjoyable levels of bell
production. New games should not have
this problem, but existing saved games are
vulnerable. Unfortunately, a fully
backward compatible fix would be quite
complex and thus likely to cause worse
problems and delay this release, so please
do not report this as a bug. Such
reports will be closed with a `Wont Fix'
status.

There are also lurking
problems with old saved games using the
America_large map, due to some lake tiles
with null regions and single isolated river
tiles. The map has been fixed so new
games are safe. These problems have
caused crashes, all reported cases of which
are fixed, but we are not that confident
there are no more.

Finally, there
are still various hard to reproduce problems
where the active unit is not correctly
displayed. These tend to depend
strongly on what happened just before.
If you wish to report one of these bugs, we
will need a saved game, and instructions on
what to do to make the problem happen.
A saved game in the failed state will not be
enough.

We hope you enjoy FreeCol 0.10.7.

FreeCol 0.10.6 released

Thursday, 27 December 2012

FreeCol 0.10.6 has been released, to
coincide with the end of the world.
Thanks to all contributors, but particularly
to izzieliu (see below) and reflame (most
prolific bug reporter).

The main user-visible changes since
0.10.5 are:

>80 bugs fixed.

colony names (freecol ruleset): The
colony names have been revised for accuracy
and chronological order, contributed by
izzieliu.

disasters: Colonies aare subject to
natural disasters.

editor: The map editor should be
working again.

European trade: Trading of goods with
other European nations should be working
again.

intervention force: A foreign power
may intervene and aid you against the
REF.

map reveal: The map is fully revealed
on independence, as in Col1.

native anger: Native settlements now
have a `most hated nation', visible in
the various popups, reports and the `!'
chip by the settlement name.

native trade: An option has been added
to allow trading with empty carrier
units.

options panel: New tree-view of the
options.

path finding: The path finding code
has been reworked, and should now find
the fastest path in more cases.

peace: The monarch now sometimes
declares peace.

ship names: Ships now have names by
default. Historic ship name list
contributed by izzieliu.

AI:

Following the path finding
rewrite, most AI actions have been
reworked and are now more robust and
efficient, fixing many long standing
bugs. This was a lot of work and
the main reason for the long release
cycle. Much of this is not really
obvious to a casual player, the AI just
fails less often.For example: In a
0.10.5 test game the Russian AI sent a
unit to build a colony on a small
island, but when it arrived the colony
site had already been taken by the
Swedish. The Russian unit just
hung around until eventually
captured. With 0.10.6 a new colony
site is chosen as soon as the existing
one becomes unavailable, and if needed a
transport unit will be sent to take the
colony founders there.

European AI nations now send
missionaries to nearby native
settlements.

European AI player cheating has
been reduced, some explicit cheats are
now controllable in the game
options.

Native AI gift and tribute demand
probabilities are now game
options.

Note though, with very few
exceptions, the AI is concerned only
with the efficiency of its
movements. It makes no attempt to
check if it is moving its units into
danger. Not yet. That is the
next major thing to do with the
AI. For now, do not bother
reporting bugs where the AI moved a unit
into unnecessary danger. We
know.

A serious bug has been discovered in 0.10.6
that removes all colonists from captured
colonies. 0.10.7 will be releasd soon, fixing
this and other less serious bugs.

FreeCol 0.10.5 released

Sunday, 19 February 2012

FreeCol 0.10.5 has been released. This is
mainly a bug-fix release to fix serious game
corrupting bugs in 0.10.4.

A few other bugs have been fixed, and the
amount of lumber delivered when a forest
tile is cleared is now more Col1
compatible.